Charting the four-year journey to today’s launch of crowdfunded RPG Torment: Tides of Numenera

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Charting the four-year journey to today’s launch of crowdfunded RPG Torment: Tides of Numenera

The Torment RPG legacy as told by the creator who has been there from the very beginning

After four years of development and with $5 million raised in crowdfunding, it’s finally here: Torment: Tides of Numenera launches on PlayStation 4 today!

Set on earth one billion years in the future on the science-fantasy Numenera setting, Torment is a game where we invite you define your legacy – find your answer to the question “What does one life matter?” On the road towards that goal, you’ll have to make thousands of choices and face the consequences.

Torment

At inXile, we love making games where the player tells the story, and we make sure to add many different opportunities to make decisions that truly matter. Torment: Tides of Numenera, true to its legacy, is a game set in a world unlike any other, with a deeply personal story, and offers near-bottomless choice and consequence. As RPGs go, it offers one of the most in-depth stories we’ve ever built, with over 1.2 million words, and some of the craziest situations and characters we’ve ever dreamed up. And on top of that, the game has a unique combat system we call the Crisis System, where each encounter is handcrafted and you can use your environment or even talk your way out of the fight.

Torment

But let’s go back a few steps, as you may be asking yourself “Alright, but what’s a Torment?” Two decades ago, I ran a studio by the name of Interplay, which published and/or developed titles like Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, Descent, Stonekeep, and – of course – Planescape: Torment. We were a studio that lived by the credo “by gamers, for gamers”, and I don’t think any of our titles expressed that quite as well as Planescape: Torment did. Here was a game unlike any other, the fevered brainchild of developers with a love of pen and paper games and a penchant for the dark and bizarre. It wasn’t the usual kind of pitch, but both the artistic side of me and the teen inside me that loved D&D had to see this game happen, so it was an easy greenlight.

Torment

Today Planescape: Torment is remembered as one of the great classics, often listed as the best cRPG of all time, and praised for its literary qualities. People have long been asking me if a sequel would ever happen. Four years ago, I got developers from the original game together to create a thematic successor worthy of the Torment name, and people proved they truly wanted this title when they made us the highest funded Kickstarter at the time.

Development on crowdfunded games is unlike that of traditionally funded games. It allows us to make games using crowdfunding that otherwise would simply not exist. We’re blessed with a backer base that has supported our vision throughout. Of course, for us that adds a hefty double burden for Torment: Tides of Numenera. Make a game true to the heritage of one of the greatest RPGs of all time that simultaneously makes your nearly hundred thousand backers happy.

Torment

So of course expectations are high, but our backers have also helped us through the way – giving invaluable feedback during the development process and testing our beta version with us. Because gamers are so uniquely involved in this title from its very inception, perhaps it holds truer to the phrase “by gamers, for gamers” than we ever did before.

It’s been a long four years to get this title to them, but we’re delivering a game we’re very proud of, and early the feedback has been positive. I hope you’ll join us in exploring the Ninth World, and find your legacy!

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